Daniel E. Baughman (1867-1960) was born April 18, 1867, on the homestead of his parents, John Baughman (Bachmann) [2](1833-1914) and Catherine Naffziger Baughman (1836-1914) located in Panola Township, Woodford County, Illinois. He attended the Flanagan Mennonite Congregation, which was cofounded by his parents in 1876 as an alternative to the long buggy ride to attend the Waldo Mennonite Church. His first money was earned helping a neighbor drive cattle to market—the 50 cents a day he and his siblings earned in doing farm work was kept by his father.
Being the fifth of the twelve children, he also lived in the same household with his grandparents, Jacob and Barbara Naffziger. Jacob Naffziger (1798-1888) was an early Amish minister and brother of Peter “the Apostle” Naffziger, both natives of Hochheim in Hesse bei Worms. Jacob Naffziger died in 1888 and is buried next to his wife in the Baughman Cemetery located on the farm. Jacob Naffziger and his wife Barbara Krehbiel Naffziger (1797-1876) migrated to Butler County, Ohio, in 1830 upon the recommendation of brother Peter Naffziger.3 Barbara Krehbiel was a member of the family that settled in the region of Weitersweiler-Weierhof-Dreisen, migrating from Switzerland in the 1600’s to the Palatinate, (now being part of the state of Rheinland-Pfalz) some 30 kilometers west of Worms. Dr. Baughman’s younger sister, Lena Baughman, (1869-75) who died of diphtheria on July 7,1875, at the age of 6 years, was also buried in the same cemetery after her funeral was held in the barn.
In
his youth he met Anna King, (1867-1959), daughter of John King and Mary
Rinkenberger King, also a native of the Flanagan Mennonite Congregation. The
couple were married on Christmas eve, 1889, by the Reverend ‘Father’ Joseph Stuckey
at Danvers, an Amish Mennonite minister who is known for the 11 congregations
in central Illinois which were named after him. This marriage would last 70
years. The couple had one daughter Ethel Baughman (1896-1976) who married Dr.
Vearl Heater, a star athlete and recent graduate of the Iowa State College
School of Veterinary Medicine, who was also a manager in the business. He died
unexpectedly in 1925 of an infectious disease, which turned into pneumonia. As
a result of his unfulfilled dream to turn the business over to his son-in-law,
Dr. Baughman had to run the business himself until he was 78 years old until it
was sold to American Home Products in 1945.
He
decided to attend veterinary school in Chicago against his father’s wishes. He
graduated in 1892 with a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine Degree from a two-year
course of training at the Chicago School of Veterinary Medicine, one of the
premier veterinary schools of its day. He then set up practice in the community
of Danvers, Illinois, where his grandparents, John Bachmann (1800-1880) and
Anna Staker Bachmann, (1805-1890) and aunts, Barbara Bachmann Schertz and
Francis (Fanny) Bachmann Augsburger had moved with their families from Butler
County, Ohio, in 1874. All are buried
west of Danvers in the Stout’s Grove Cemetery. Most of them were followers of
Peter Naffziger’s “Button Church” or
“Hessan Church.” Dr. Baughman,
being fond of horses, became a sought after veterinarian in the area, but
conflict with the Amish ways caused him to look elsewhere. He engaged in the
verboten conduct of purchasing life insurance. There was a belief common to
both German and Scandinavian immigrant farmers that the purchase of life
insurance was a sin because one was in effect gambling with one’s own life.
In 1892 his father, John Baughman, and older brother, Jacob N. Baughman, (1861-1959) purchased 720 acres near Manson, in Calhoun County, Iowa, becoming the first Mennonites to locate in this area. Dr. Baughman upon a visit to Manson in the fall of 1897 discovered an opportunity in nearby Ft. Dodge to move his veterinary practice. Thus, he moved his wife Anna and daughter Ethel Baughman to Ft. Dodge from Danvers in the following January of 1898. He thereupon became the first licensed veterinarian in the northern half of Iowa to be a graduate of a veterinary college. His advice was sought from other veterinarians from a wide area. Dan and Anna became members of the Ft. Dodge Presbyterian Church whose benefactors they would both endow with substantial gifts before and after their deaths. He also was a prominent Mason and Shriner.
Dr.
Baughman was primarily a large animal practitioner with emphasis on horses.
Small animal practice in those times was an anachronism. Cats and dogs were an
unnecessary appendage to the typical Midwestern farming enterprise. They shared
the same skim milk that was used to slop the hogs. The veterinary care they
received was performed gratuitously to the delight of the children of the farm
family.
Dr. Baughman’s father was a breeder of
Percheron draft horses in Manson, forming the German American Horse Company. A
Percheron horse had the same value in the 1890’s as a 160-acre farm. The old
“doc” enjoyed telling the story of a farmer in an agitated state coming to his
residence and asking for immediate help in curing his ill mare. He recounted
how he stopped his supper to saddle his horse to head out with the farmer to
care for his seriously ill horse. When he arrived at the farm he asked the
farmer where the ill horse was kept and he was surprised to hear the farmer say
that he had ridden the ill horse behind Dr. Baughman all the way to his farm.
This was the oft-told story of Dr. Baughman related to groups before which he
appeared.
In
1912 an opportunity arose to manufacture, retail and counsel with respect to a
new serum to cure hog cholera. Hog cholera was one of the most costly diseases
to the economy of the state of Iowa and it was for that reason that it financed
the research on this disease at a farm near Ames, Iowa. The anti-hog cholera serum was discovered by
employees of the United States Department of Agriculture, Bureau of Animal
Industry, in 1906 and was first used on farms in 1907. The process was patented
by the government. Dr. Baughman bought the serum from the government and
started injecting it in swine at Ames, Iowa, through a business he established
with a former employee of the Bureau of Animal Industry, a Mr. Hamilton, which
they called the Ames Vaccine Company. Dr. Baughman hired Hamilton because of
his experience in working with the manufacture of the serum for the federal
government. Within a year he moved the business to Ft. Dodge where he renamed
it the Fort Dodge Serum Company. Hamilton stayed on for four years before
moving west. Although there were other makers of the serum, Dr. Baughman became
the dominant producer because of his excellent management capabilities. One of
the keys to his success was the hiring of Howard Shore of the Bureau of Animal
Industry to be his production supervisor in 1919. He held that position until
his death in 1952. Shore, being a former employee of the Virus and Serum
Division of the Department, played a key role in obtaining approval of the USDA
of the serums developed by the company. In 1932, because of the addition of
many biological and pharmaceutical products to its line, the Company’s name was
changed to Fort Dodge Laboratories.
In
1919 he also hired Scott Barrett from Cutter Laboratories in Chicago as sales
manager, who subsequently became president of the company when Dr. Baughman
sold it in 1945 to American Home Products. Additionally he hired Dr. H. P.
Lefler in 1919, also formerly with the Department of Animal Industry as the
director of the production of hog cholera serum and virus. These three
men-Shore, Barrett and Lefler—with Dr. Baughman, directed the affairs of the
company until 1945 when it was sold. The success of the vaccination effort
nationwide was realized in 1969 when hog cholera in the United States was
eradicated even though the highest vaccination rate at any time in the past did
not exceed 60%.
The
company joined in the building of a plant in Spain in 1933, which was sold to
the Spanish partners soon after American Home Products purchased the company in
1945. Dr. Lefler spent four years in Spain building that plant. This also
necessitated Dr. Baughman spending some time there where he had to learn to
drink beer as the alternative to the bad local water. (The company in recent
years built a plant in Northern Ireland to try to break into the virtually
closed European Common Market.) Dr. Baughman traveled by train and car and did
some of his business out of a room in the Palmer House Hotel in Chicago. In
1935 he hired a young man, D.A.Peterson of Dayton, Iowa, as his private
secretary and car driver. He was a frequent visitor to Mennonite communities
where he and his wife’s families lived such as Milford, Nebraska, and Gridley
and Normal, Illinois. The author remembers his many visits to his home in Ft.
Dodge and of Uncle Dan to the Jacob Baughman farm near Manson.
The
business fell upon hard times in the Depression when farmers simply did not
have the money to have their hogs vaccinated. But the company had the good
fortune in 1938 to develop a vaccine for sleeping sickness in horses, a disease
that was plaguing the draft horse population in Iowa and southern Minnesota. It
was a virus that affected the brain of the horse, causing it to walk to one
side in circles and eventually go down and die. This development secured the
company’s future, but it marked the beginning of the end for the draft horse as
farmers now had an excuse to buy their first tractor.
There
are few assosciates of Dr. Baughman still living, but many of those
assosciates, including secretaries, who held even a few shares of stock in his
company, which was eventually converted to American Home Products stock, became
wealthy. One pharmaceutical publication described Dr. Baughman at the time of
his death on July 8,1960, as “ a man of courage and unquestioned integrity.”
Dr. Daniel E. Baughman and his wife, Anna King Baughman